Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation - Softcover

Chancellor, Edward

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0452281806 ISBN 13: 9780452281806

Publisher: Plume Books, 2000

Synopsis

A lively, original, and challenging history of stock market speculation from the 17th century to present day.

Is your investment in that new Internet stock a sign of stock market savvy or an act of peculiarly American speculative folly? How has the psychology of investing changed--and not changed--over the last five hundred years?

In Devil Take the Hindmost, Edward Chancellor traces the origins of the speculative spirit back to ancient Rome and chronicles its revival in the modern world: from the tulip scandal of 1630s Holland, to "stockjobbing" in London's Exchange Alley, to the infamous South Sea Bubble of 1720, which prompted Sir Isaac Newton to comment, "I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people."

Here are brokers underwriting risks that included highway robbery and the "assurance of female chastity"; credit notes and lottery tickets circulating as money; wise and unwise investors from Alexander Pope and Benjamin Disraeli to Ivan Boesky and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

From the Gilded Age to the Roaring Twenties, from the nineteenth century railway mania to the crash of 1929, from junk bonds and the Japanese bubble economy to the day-traders of the Information Era, Devil Take the Hindmost tells a fascinating story of human dreams and folly through the ages.

About this title

Review

"The longest bull market in history" is a term that gets used a lot these days. Since 1990, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has risen some 8,000 points, from around 2,700 in January 1990 to nearly 11,000 today--a boom by anyone's standards, including Edward Chancellor's. In Devil Take the Hindmost, Chancellor takes an entertaining, albeit sobering, look at the history of speculative manias and the mass delusion that surrounds them.

Beginning with the "tulipomania" that gripped Holland in the 1630s, Chancellor chronicles the formations and irrational euphoria that can inflate markets, from shares of South Sea stock in England in the 1720s to real estate in Japan in the late 1980s. He characterises the speculative spirit as one that loves freedom, detests cant and abhors restrictions. From the tulip Colleges of the 17th century to the Internet investment clubs of the late 20th century, speculation has established itself as the most demonic of economic activities. Although profoundly secular, speculation is not simply about greed. The essence of speculation remains a Utopian yearning for freedom and equality which counterbalances the drab rationalistic materialism of the modern economic system with its inevitable inequalities of wealth. But it's precisely such inevitability that always seems to win out, when "sharply rising prices followed by sudden panic without cause" bring speculative excess to an abrupt end. Highly recommended. --Harry C. Edwards, Amazon.com

Review

Praise for Devil Take the Hindmost

"An admirably researched and very well written account of speculative insanity from the earliest times to, let no one doubt, the present. Anyone contemplating a stock market venture and certainly anyone now involved should read this book."--John Kenneth Galbraith

"The greatest hits of financial silliness recounted coherently and...gracefully...Chancellor does a fine job of capturing the atmosphere of the times."--Forbes magazine

"Entertaining, useful, admirable scholarship...Chancellor seems to have read everything."--The New York Times Book Review

"The subtle ways in which individual investors become drawn into crowd behavior is a much studied phenomenon, covered brilliantly...in the book Devil Take the Hindmost."--The Daily Telegraph (London)

"The South Sea Company is one of the great bubble and crash stories. Many books have referred to it. One of the finest is Devil Take the Hindmost."--Debashis Basu, Money Life

"Excellent."--City A.M.

"[An] essential history of financial manias."--The Observer

Edition details

• Publisher: Plume Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0452281806
• ISBN 13: 9780452281806
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 400